Customer incentive programs, such as loyalty programs, issue points to customers (i.e., participants) as a reward for certain activities such as the purchase of certain products or services or performing a certain action. These points create a loyalty or affinity with the customer and encourage the customer to continue a desired behavior. The customer is motivated through some type of reward offering which allows the customer to redeem the points for rewards. Frequently, such loyalty programs provide the customer with a limited listing of rewards from selected redemption vendors in the form of merchandise, certificates, or other products or services (henceforth referred to as rewards) and the number of points needed to obtain one of the rewards from the list. In general, the selected redemption vendors are a limited number which have some type of relationship, contractual or otherwise, with the loyalty program. The customer selects a reward for purchase with the points and indicates to the loyalty program that the particular product or service has been selected. The loyalty program obtains the product or service on behalf of the customer from one of the limited number of selective redemption vendors and provides it to the customer. Some rewards are of a nature that human intervention is needed to redeem/fulfill a reward. For example, if the customer selects a roundtrip airline ticket, the loyalty program on behalf of the customer or the customer directly would purchase the ticket through a selected travel agent or a selected airline employee and provide the ticket (or have it sent) to the customer. The points needed to obtain the reward (e.g., the ticket) are deducted from the customer's point account by the agent or employee.
As such, when a customer wants to redeem points for “high-touch” rewards, the customer has to work through a third-party organization. There is an opportunity to eliminate the human intervention to redeem such rewards by allowing the customer to systematically redeem their points for rewards using redemption vendors that otherwise deal in currency.